Alternative method for identification of the dynamic properties of bolted joints

Bolted joints often have a significant effect on the dynamical behavior of assembled mechanical structures. An accurate model of an assembled structure depends on correctly determining and identifying the dynamic parameters of bolted joints. This paper presents an alternative method for identifying these dynamic parameters using structure's natural frequency and damping. A novel experiment is designed with a test piece consisting of only bolted joints, with the governing equations of the test piece established using the analytical method. The relationships between the equivalent dynamic parameters of the bolted joints and the natural frequencies and damping ratios of the test piece are determined for both the normal and tangential directions. The parameter identification problem for bolted joints is thus transformed into a test of the natural frequency and the damping ratio of the test piece. In order to check the accuracy of the proposed identification method, the test piece and bolted joints are modeled using the finite element method (FEM) and the dynamic properties of the test piece are analyzed. The maximum error between the natural frequencies of the FEM result and the experimental values in the normal and tangential models are 4.73% and 0.34%, respectively. The result indicates that the proposed method is valid for the dynamic parameter identification of bolted joints.